Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wire twisting machine, wire construction and method which provides a randomly varying lay of a twisted pair of wires over a given length or time. This improves the electrical characteristics of the final cable construction.
The problem of interference of random noise between insulated wires in runs of communication wires and cables has always been a problem. As the need for more and more cabling has increased, it is necessary to run more and more wires within given conduits or in bundles formed for purposes of transporting data and information. This has become even more important in recent years as the frequencies used in connection with wires for telecommunications and computer applications have increased and therefore the chances of leakage or contamination of information passing between adjacent wires has become ever greater.
In order to minimize problems resulting from the closeness of the wires and to facilitate the handling of long lengths of wires, the wires are generally twisted in pairs or numbers greater than two to form cables. However, it is important that the wires not be in a close parallel relationship for any substantial length in order to minimize the possibility of contamination or noise from one wire effecting another wire.
Therefore, efforts are made in the manufacturing of wire to insure that different lays of wire are placed alongside each other for pairs of wires so that there can be no intertwining between groups of twisted wires which would exacerbate any cross contamination problems. Various different attempts have been made to accomplish this purpose. For example, when forming cables of various numbers of pairs, care is taken to insure that the lay length of each pair of wires is different to reduce the effects of proximity between the various pairs. Similarly, efforts in the past have attempted to vary the length of the lay along the path of the wire, but this has generally not proved to be easy to accomplish.
Various different machines have been provided for winding wires, but none of these machines have been able to produce a randomly varying length of lay or twist pitch in the wire.